Limerick nuclear relicensing hearings invite public input

An important opportunity exists this week for residents of the Pottstown tri-county area to have a say in a quality of life issue for the future. That is, besides the obvious opportunity that exists in the Tuesday primary election.

This opportunity is the two-session public hearing scheduled Thursday for comments on the environmental impact of relicensing for Exelon’s Limerick nuclear plant.

The license for the reactor called Unit 1 expires on Oct. 26, 2024, and the license on Unit 2 expires on June 22, 2029. Unit 1 went on line in 1986 and Unit 2 went on line in 1990.

The public hearings scheduled Thursday at Sunnybrook Ballroom will likely be the last opportunity for the public to comment on the relicensing decision, according to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

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“Now that the Draft Environmental Impact Statement is available, we would encourage interested members of the public to review the report and provide us with their comments,” said Leslie Perkins, the NRC’s environmental project manager for Limerick, in a prepared NRC statement.

In its unique prose style, the NRC identifies the key take-away from the draft report by saying “the adverse environmental impacts of license renewal for LGS are not great enough to deny the option of license renewal for energy planning decision makers.”

This opinion comes despite a two-year delay in the relicensing plan by a court decision requiring the government to re-think the environmental impact of storing spent nuclear fuel at nuclear plants. A federal court said the NRC must consider the possibility that a national repository for spent fuel, once planned for Yucca Mountain, Nev., may never be built and that the spent fuel storage at all nuclear plants may become permanent.

The issue of spent fuel storage is no small matter. Last July, in a speech on the floor of the House of Representatives, an Illinois Republican said “Limerick has 1,143 metric tons of uranium spent fuel on site. At Limerick, the waste is stored above the ground in pools and in casks.” Spent fuel rods remain radioactive for hundreds, and some say, thousands of years.

In addition to the spent-fuel questions, residents may want to go on record with opinions about a recent Delaware River Basin Commission decision to allow Exelon to continue to add water from Schuylkill County reservoirs and an abandoned coal mine pool into the Schuylkill River to augment the flow and allow the utility to withdraw additional water from the river at given times.

Or, residents may want to ask about earthquake potential in the wake of a closer analysis of eastern U.S. fault lines.

To date, the NRC has never rejected a license renewal application of a nuclear plant. It has previously renewed the licenses of 72 of the nation’s 104 commercial nuclear reactors.

That is all the more reason why residents’ concerns and questions should be on record before the final review.

Thursday’s public meetings are scheduled in Sunnybrook Ballroom, 50 Sunnybrook Road in Lower Pottsgrove. The first meeting will take place at 2 p.m. and the second at 7 p.m.

This is an opportunity to have a say about living in the shadow of the Limerick towers. If you have concerns, now is the time to voice them.